Industrial manufacturing, processing and storage facilities such as chemical plants, refineries and shipping terminals typically include a vast network of piping systems for transporting the raw or finished products through the facility. Such piping systems necessarily include a number of valves for controlling the flow of material through the facility.
Many of the products handled in the aforementioned plants are hazardous volatile organic compounds (VOC's). Unfortunately, the valves used to control the flow of material through the plants typically experience a certain amount of undesired leakage referred to as "fugitive" emissions. Fugitive emissions, which are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), frequently occur around the packing between the valve stem and the body of the valve. These fugitive emissions must be monitored in order to comply with EPA emission regulations. Accordingly, leak detectors are placed near the valves, usually adjacent to the leak prone valve stems or other non-point sources, in order to monitor the leakage rate.
In order to obtain accurate readings, the leak detectors must be calibrated on a periodic basis, which typically must be accomplished from a remote location. One method of calibrating such leak detectors is to eject a small quantity of calibrant adjacent to the leak detector. The detector reading is then compared to a standard based on empirical data or a look up table, and the detector is adjusted accordingly.